Cane Creek’s Eliza MacLean featured in DukeEnvironment Magazine’s spring 2008 issue

We are very excited that DukeEnvironment Magazine has written an article on Cane Creek’s very own, Eiza macLean. Look for the article called Biogeochemistry ON THE FARM: Eliza MacLean MEM’96 Puts Nutrient Cycling to Work on Her Alamance County Farm by Lisa M. Dellwo in the spring 2008 issue.

Here is an excerpt of the article:

If, as Wendell Berry has famously said, “Eating is an agricultural act,” and if, as several popular books have persuasively argued, agriculture is an environmental act, then it follows that each piece of food we consume—whether cheese doodle or spinach salad—has an environmental impact.

Whether that impact is good, bad or neutral depends on how we choose our food. That much was made clear in books by Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver last year that prompted a national conversation on the value of eating sustainably and helped propel the word “locavore” into the public consciousness.

That puts Eliza MacLean MEM’96 in the right place at the right time. MacLean is the owner of Cane Creek Farm, a lively operation in Alamance County that has become known in particular for its pasture-raised pork.

Cane Creek pork—particularly pork from MacLean’s small herd of heirloom Ossabaw Island hogs—is featured on the menus of fine restaurants throughout the Triangle and Triad as well as grand New York restaurants like Daniel. Slow food visionary Alice Waters made a pilgrimage to Cane Creek Farm to visit the Ossabaws after sampling Ben Barker’s preparation at Durham’s Magnolia Grill. Chef Andrea Reusing at Chapel Hill’s The Lantern once created a six-course “nose to tail” meal, including dessert, featuring the Ossabaw. MacLean has been featured in at least one book, speaks at workshops about her farm and practices, and frequently welcomes reporters to her farm. An hour-long interview by NPR’s Frank Stasio in September 2007 led to 5,000 hits on Cane Creek’s Web site in 24 hours.

What is particularly impressive is that MacLean’s farming career began only about six years ago. Read the complete article